Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP is a premier, full-service law firm with offices in New York, Silicon Valley and Paris. Firm lawyers are leading practitioners in their respective fields. The firm represents public and private companies – ranging from Global 1000 to middle-market and emerging growth companies – across a broad range of industries, as well as funds, institutions and individuals.

Our lawyers have exceptional credentials, with outstanding academic records and distinguished careers in business, government service, academia and law. Many have edited top law reviews or have clerked for leading federal judges. They have rich and wide-ranging experience solving complex business issues in partnership with their clients.

Philip
S.
Kaufman

Partner

Philip S. Kaufman is a skilled and accomplished courtroom advocate with a long and effective record of representing business clients in both trials and appeals across a comprehensive range of legal matters, including securities, RICO, insurance, real estate, banking and class action litigation. Mr. Kaufman has defended dozens of law and accounting firms in securities class actions and complex professional liability suits, generating judicial decisions that have become important precedents in those fields. He has successfully defended corporate directors and officers in class actions, shareholder derivative actions and actions brought by bankruptcy trustees and creditors. He has defended hedge funds and their principals against investor allegations of securities and commodities fraud, and represented commercial banks in class actions brought by borrowers. Adept at both civil litigation and regulatory actions, Mr. Kaufman has defended major hotel organizations and publicly traded REITs against both private lawsuits and actions brought by regulatory authorities. His work on behalf of insurance companies includes both high-exposure coverage litigation with insureds and disputes with reinsurers.

Mr. Kaufman has also litigated some of the most challenging and high-profile cases to emerge in recent years in the corporate restructuring and bankruptcy arena, serving as lead or co-lead trial counsel for creditors’ committees, bank groups, bondholders or other major creditor constituencies in the Residential Capital, Owens Corning, Adelphia and Charter Communications bankruptcies, and as lead trial counsel for the debtor in the Genco Shipping & Trading bankruptcy.